John McCain ceded, the country, if not the election as a whole, on Wednesday night. The Senator gave in to the trend he's been moving towards for weeks now. He decided to go with red states rather than blue, to choose creaky conservatism over forward looking bipartisanship. McCain chose the politics of anger and bias. He just let it all wash over him, and then he waded in it up to his neck and happily splashed around in it, oblivious to those around him. On Wednesday night John McCain gave up on independents and so-called Reagan Democrats entirely and threw his campaign to the fiery Republican base. It's a move that will fail him.

There were three crucial moments in the debate that speak best to McCain's final descent, and they all connect to the culture wars, the fires of which he and his running mate Sarah Palin have been stoking for more than a month now. The first we'd seen before – his reference to Obama creating "class warfare," a trope that is as out of touch as it is disingenuous (as one friend said to me last night during the debate, "Does McCain think the Bush years haven't been about class warfare?").

But the other two were new. This was the first time these presidential debates have touched Roe versus Wade. For a moment it seemed McCain would advance a centrist (if not entirely plausible) position, begging off the idea of a litmus test for Supreme Court judges. And then with a grimace and an eye roll he mocked the idea of granting women abortion exceptions for the health of the mother. "Health" he sneered, derisively, and made little air quotes with his fingers. And with that, he lost all those centrist, mildly, or avowedly, pro-choice women in America who, yes, care about the health of the mother.

It was also the first time that McCain has been asked to address, in front of Obama, allowing the general level of character assassination – beyond the construct of the ridiculous Weatherman links – to escalate past the typical election year sludge into the Rovian territory it has wandered into of late. It was a chance for McCain to distance himself from some of the scarier elements that have popped up at his rallies recently – the people who scream "kill [Obama]" in the audience or "terrorist" that have even seemed to panic McCain. Instead he made it worse. Here were the crucial lines:

Obama: At some of the rallies that your running mate was holding, in which all the Republican reports indicated were shouting, when my name came up, things like "terrorist" and "kill him," and that you're running mate didn't mention, didn't stop, didn't say "Hold on a second, that's kind of out of line." … We can have serious differences about our health care policy, for example, John, because we do have a difference on health care policy, but we...

McCain: We do and I hope...

Obama: ... talking about it this evening. But when people suggest that I pal around with terrorists, then we're not talking about issues.

McCain: Let me just say categorically I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you're going to have some fringe peoples. You know that. And I've – and we've always said that that's not appropriate. But to somehow say that group of young women who said "Military wives for McCain" are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything - and those veterans that wear those hats that say "World War Two, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq," I'm not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they're great citizens. And I'm not going to stand for somebody saying that because someone yelled something at a rally – there's a lot of things that have been yelled at your rallies, Senator Obama, that I'm not happy about either.

This was completely specious. Obviously Obama wasn't deriding veterans in hats or military wives for McCain. It was nonsensical. And with that moment McCain lost his chance to take the high road, to try to undo some of the more egregious scenes at Sarah Palin's rallies. He might have said, I'm proud of those veterans and military wives for McCain who come to my rallies, but yes, of late there were a few horrible things shouted, or asked, and I repudiate those jeers. He was pointedly asked to distance himself from those that seem ready to burn a cross on the lawn of the White House, and McCain couldn't bring himself to do it.